One popular type of floral display includes water-retaining media, such as foam blocks, into which live flowers can be inserted. Water within the blocks helps maintain the life of the flowers.
The popularity of such displays has resulted in a demand for larger displays, as well as for displays that have large closed shapes, such as solid hearts. A solid heart can be more desirable than an opened-shape heart, since the closed shape can hold substantially more water-retaining media, and therefore support more live flowers.
Typical floral displays include a base, water-retaining media, and a structure to attach the media to the base. Some designs use two dimensional struts that couple the media to the base, such as those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,058,929, or U.S. Pat. No. 5,943,820. Yet other designs use three dimensional cage structures, such as those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,688,040. In yet other designs paper mache is used to retain the assembled display together.
Currently existing attachment structures tend to be inadequate for larger shapes and also for closed shapes. The weight of the saturated media can be great enough that it separates the foam structure from the base. This is especially true in those situations in which the owner of the display would like to have the display oriented as vertically as possible, so as to show off the live flowers. In some cases, the foam separates from the base, with the subsequent loss of the display.
What are needed are methods and apparatus for improving the structure integrity of floral displays. Various embodiments of the inventions described herein do this in novel and unobvious ways.